Technoccult

A drug that could give you perfect visual memory

Klint Finley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:59:27 +0000

Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.

A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.

io9: A drug that could give you perfect visual memory

(via Edge of Tomorrow)

Professor Abandons Grades for Experience Points

Klint Finley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:51:17 +0000

A professor at Indiana University has instituted a system of gaining experience points through classwork instead of receiving traditional grades.

Lee Sheldon is an accomplished screenwriter and game writer, having worked on TV shows like ST:TNG and Charlie’s Angels as well as the Agatha Christie series of games from The Adventure Company. He now teaches game design courses for Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications. Instead of assigning his students a grade at the end of the course, he instead starts every student at 0 xp and they earn points through completing quests like solo projects and quizzes in addition to grouping up for guild projects and pick up groups. How many points they have at the end of the course determines their actual “grade.”

Sheldon put the system in place so that his students were motivated by the game theory with which they were familiar. “The elements of the class are couched in terms they understand, terms that are associated with fun rather than education,” Sheldon said.

Escapist Magazine: Professor Abandons Grades for Experience Points

I could see this being a little more granular as well – awarding points in specific areas. At the end of the course, students could really assess where their strengths are. Over the course of a larger program of study (2-6 years or whatever), “experience points” in certain areas would really start to stack up. Having a bigger assessment of strengths would be more useful than a GPA or a list of pass/fails.

My alma mater Evergreen State College works something like this. You take only one class at a time. Each class is worth 16 credits, and the credits are usually spread across a few different areas. For example, I took a class called “Science of Mind” which awarded credits in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and statistics. If you don’t meet the objectives for one area of study, say statistics, you might lose credit for that subject, ending up with only 14 credits that quarter. There are no grades, so your GPA doesn’t suffer, but you won’t have as many statistics credits.

However, having a more defined set of areas that one could accumulate points over time through different classes and projects (“written communications,” “leadership,” “technical problem solving,” “mechanical aptitude,” etc. etc.) seems like it would be very useful for both the students themselves and for potential employers or graduate program committees or whoever else might need to evaluate a students strengths.

Electro-shock experiment replicated in France

Klint Finley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:34:02 +0000

A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants.

Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks – increasing in voltage – upon their opponents.

Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever.

Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows.

They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme.

BBC: French TV contestants made to inflict ‘torture’

This is, of course, a replication of the Milgram experiment.

Glenn Greenwald notes the irony of Fox News’s moral outrage over the incident.

US Army claims WikiLeaks is a security threat

Klint Finley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:38:15 +0000

(Above: WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange)

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

New York Times: Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers

See also this interview with Julian Assange.

(via Wade)

700-year-old Brain Found Preserved

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:32:03 +0000

ResearchBlogging.orgEvolutionary psychology tends to receive harsh criticism, and often rightly so. One of the main reasons for this is the severe lack of evidence for many of it’s proposals given that the paucity of fossilised brains fails to bolster many a case. And it isn’t even anyone’s fault. That’s just the way it goes sometimes, that the brain is a jelly-like substance that is subject to decay after death, and there’s no way we can objectively analyse or verify any differences in brains of long ago with brains of today.

This isn’t set to change anytime soon, but the remarkable discovery of a medieval child’s brain was the subject of a Neuroimage paper published recently. This is extremely exciting on many counts: the brain has been so fantastically preserved that it is possible to identify the frontal, temporal and occipital lobes, and even the sulci and gyri, the grooves and furrows channeled into brains.

However it is only the left-hemisphere that survived and not the entire brain, which had also shrunk to about 80% of it’s original weight due to the (natural) mummification process.

Neurowhoa: 700-year-old Brain Found Preserved

Car hacking: disgruntled ex-employee disables cars remotely

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:34:53 +0000

More than 100 car owners in and around Austin, Texas recently discovered that their cars wouldn’t start. Or that their horns wouldn’t stop honking — all night long. Or that their vehicle leases were suddenly (and luckily, temporarily) transferred to deceased rapper Tupac Shakur.

All of these annoyances were thanks to a former collection agent for Austin-based car dealership Texas Auto Center, who is accused of taking revenge on his former employer by remotely disabling more than 100 customer cars. Twenty-year old Oscar Ramos-Lopez reportedly gained unauthorized access into the dealership’s remote vehicle immobilization system, which allowed him to stop customer vehicles from starting or cause their horns to honk continuously. Ramos-Lopez is also said to have deleted customer accounts and swapped celebrity names for the names of actual customers, according to a report by Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.

The vehicle disabling technology, powered by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies (PayTeck), is only supposed to be used when someone fails to meet their auto loan or lease obligations. Austin police arrested Lopez on Wednesday charging him with breach of computer security.

PC World: Ex-Employee Wreaks Havoc on 100 Cars — Wirelessly

(Thanks Bill!)

Gaming the real world – John Robb on Jane McGonigal’s TED talk

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:47:44 +0000

However, at this point the presentation breaks down. McGonigal then proceeds to think of ways gamers can be used to do things (which plays well with the users at TED). While I give her props for thinking about ways to generate ideas on how to fix global problems, she entirely misses the big idea.

Here’s the big idea. For active online gamers real life is broken. It doesn’t make any sense. Effort isn’t connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there’s a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure. So, why play it?

They don’t. They retreat to online games. Why? Online games provide an environment that connects what you do (work, problem solving, effort, motivation level, merit) in the game to rewards (status, capabilities, etc.). These games also make it simple to get better (learn, skill up, etc.) through an intuitive just-in-time training system. The problem is that this is virtual fantasy.

So the really big idea isn’t figuring out how to USE online gamers for real world purposes (as in the dirty word: crowdsourcing — the act of other people to do work for you for FREE — blech!). Instead, it’s about finding a way to use online games to make real life better for the gamers. In short, turn games into economic darknets that work in parallel and better than the broken status quo systems. As in: economic games that connect effort with reward. Economic games with transparent rules that tangibly improve the lives of all of the players in the REAL WORLD.

Global Guerrillas: Online Games, Super Empowerment, and a Better World

Remembering Mac Tonnies

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:29:25 +0000

Mac Tonnies was a ufologist, the author of After the Martian Apocalypse and The Cryptoterrestrials, and the blogger behind Posthuman Blues. He died on October 19th, 2009 due to heart complications.

The Cryptoterrestrials was released posthumously on March 15th, 2010. Fortunately, Mac gave numerous interviews on the subject of his book prior to his death, including this one with the Ballardian and an interview on Coast to Coast AM.

Since his death, a dedicated community of friends and readers has been working to preserve his legacy. Blazingbetta (aka Sarah Multiverse) has started a Mac Tonnies tribute site, and Capn Marrrk has been hard at work archiving Posthuman Blues. I talked to both of them via instant message.

Above: Blazingbetta

Klint Finley: How did you discover Mac and his work?

Blazingbetta: I met Mac through Twitter. He was a friend of a transhumanist friend of mine, and I noticed he got retweeted a lot. I just started checking out his feed, which often led to his website.

I went ahead and introduced myself to him one day, once I had added myself to be a follower. He added me back and pretty much from that point we were conversing weekly. Our mutual friend told me he was a writer, so I did a bit of digging, and came to know what kind of stuff he wrote about.

Did you ever get to meet him in person?

No, but we had plans to meet. I live in Toronto, Canada, and he kept mentioning through the summer that he was planning to come to Halifax, I think, to shoot a TV series on the paranormal in November, and we were going to try to fit in a visit while he was up here. Unfortunately, he passed away in October.

I never got to meet him either. I really regret that.

I totally regret it, too! He would have loved Toronto, and said often he always wanted to visit. besides that, he seemed like a really fun guy to spend time with!

Can I ask how you came to know him?

It was one of two places, I can’t remember which: either the sTaRe group blog or the Cabal blog aggregator that grew out of sTaRe.

Both our blogs were on Cabal. But I think we may have originally ‘met’ through sTaRe. Either way, around 2003-2004.

Cool. Wow, that’s a long time…! I wasn’t that familiar with paranormal/ufo stuff when I first met him, I visited his site mostly because he had such an eye for design… but then I got to know what kind of stuff he researched, and then I was impressed by how level-headed he was about the whole thing.

Above: Mac’s final “women in tubes” find.

Do you have a particular favorite post his or link that he found?

I could hardly pick a favourite… I love his photography, he had a great eye for beauty, for details… I like his really old science fiction cover art, and of course his obsession for women in tubes… I love his architecture and design posts, oh my god his whole site was amazing… One that I guess stands out was that we had a thing going for a while with the triceracopter, we both couldn’t believe how awesome it was, and laughed about it for weeks, so that might be my favourite.

He’d come up with these scenarios that the triceracopter was good for. He had me in stitches all the time.

So what made you decide to start a tribute site?

A couple reasons, I guess. In the first place, I guess I wanted to preserve the sense of community that had developed as a result of his death. You see, I had met many people through Twitter just as a result of sharing condolences and updating people on what we knew of the situation (no one really knew what had happened, and it was kinda crazy the first week or two) I had seen these people on Twitter through mac’s retweets, but I began to seriously talk to them only after his passing.

It struck me that so many of these people that I had met were creative or artistic in some way.

So on the one hand, I thought that creating a site just for fan art would be a fun way to commemorate the special person he was.

When I suggested that, people picked up on it right away, and i thought, well if people like the idea and want to remember this special time, maybe we could even put the art into print for ourselves to have a lasting piece I guess I was thinking that a site like this would also help with the grieving process.

Also, Mac’s lasting impact seemed, for most people, to be his sense of joy and imagination… he just seemed to inspire people.

So I thought, when his final book comes out, let’s all be imaginative with him. I knew once I had the book in my hands, I would be illustrating to it, and I thought others would have fun doing that, too. I guess that’s how it REALLY started in my head… just a way to have fun with our last message from mac…and once I got thinking about it, i realized it might be healing for people, too.

You’re planning on compiling material there into a book?

It’s a possibility, and I make that clear in my first or second post there. The idea is not to create something to make money off of, it is more to just take the images/words and create a commemorative picture book or something. It’s pretty easy to get things in print nowadays. I guess it’s still only an idea, because its hard to say what the site will become, if anything. If it becomes a place where people do indeed post illustrations, photography, poetry, and other kinds of design like I first envisioned, then I think that would work really well as a big coffee-table book. If it turns out that people just want to share links to other sites and cool books that Mac would’ve liked, then that doesn’t translate so well. But whatever, we’ll take it as it goes.

So you’re taking a kind of hands off approach in terms of how it develops?

I guess so. I don’t really see myself as a blog owner here, just a facilitator. I like to facilitate great ideas. And this, I think, is a great idea. But it’s not up to me. I can’t force people to create; they have to do that out of their own hearts.

I personally would love to have a big book of images of creativity inspired by Mac… doesn’t that sound awesome?!

It does sound awesome. I’d also like to maybe do something with audio. I played a Halloween show not long after he died and used some sample of his voice as a tribute. But I’d like to do something more.

Aw, that sounds amazing. See, I would love to have something like that on the site, but it doesn’t translate well into a coffee table book.

Well, maybe if enough people contribute we could have a CD that could be a companion to the book or be packaged with it or whatever.

That would be so awesome. I would do it.

See, this is what I love. Collaborating and trying to think creatively. That’s what Mac was ALL about.

Above: Alien with a Mac Tonnies button, by isoban.

I really like the alien with a Mac Tonnies button that’s been posted there.

Isn’t that awesome?! Its kind of an ongoing joke around twitter lately. Lately, as in the last number of months.

What do you think it is about Mac and his work that people find so alluring?

A couple things. First, he was incredibly optimistic, even in the face of ignorance and dismissal that he would have encountered all the time. He was a trooper, and encouraged others to be.

Second, he was a fresh breath of reasonability. He took a “problem” or issue that has been around for decades and tried to cut through the mysticism and secrecy, whatever, and tried to get down to points that we could not only use, but that might help people or just be fun to know.

I think we are starving for this kind of a direct approach, in our day in age, and Mac provided it, without any hint of arrogance.

Lastly, and most of all, probably, his legacy is lasting because he was full of joy and wonderment and his unbounded enthusiasm about what our world and universe had to offer us was truly contagious. and lasting.

Have you read The Cryptoterrestrials yet?

I’ll be honest. I have not read The Cryptoterrestrials yet. In the first place, it is not available on Canadian sites yet, and his publisher suggested to me that I wait a bit for it to come out on The Book Depository website, which offers free worldwide shipping

In the second place, I am still gearing myself up to read it. I have barely been able to visit his site, Posthuman Blues, without becoming emotional, and just last night was the first time since his passing that I could bring myself to watch a video of him and hear his voice.

To receive his last message is honestly going to be one of the harder things I’ll ever have to do.

Sounds weird to feel this way about an internet friend, but he seriously broke down any kind of barriers with his outgoing personality and that smile

I understand. When I read that it was out I felt sad all over again. I haven’t read it yet either.

Totally. It brings back every bit of the loss. Because a conversation goes two-ways. That’s just how we function. So to only be able to be part of half of that seems wrong, even scary. But Mac’s friends are pushing through, you know? And being unbelievably open and honest about how they’re feeling. I admire them all.

Left: Mac Tonnies. Right: Cap’n Marrrk

Klint Finley: How did you meet Mac?

Cap’n Marrrrk says: I first met Mac through Bsti Natosi’s Chapel Perilous, which I went seeking after reading R.A.W.’s Prometheus Rising…but there was no relation between Bsti’s site and R.A.W. I stuck around anyway.

And this goes way back in Internet years before 2000.

And you guys met in person as well right?

Yeah we met twice…

Mac started PostHuman Blues in 2003, but he was posting at Chapel Perilous before then or at least commenting there.

Then after following him for a few years he told me he was coming to Saint Louis, which was great because he only lived a state away. He was the first person from the Internet, that I had met in person. He came to town with his girlfriend, who was a local, and we had a brief lunch at a Thai Pizza Place.

The first visit was very brief, only lunch. Then the second one, was dinner at the same Thai place, then we went to a performance of choreographed by his girlfriend.

You’ve been working with his parents on archiving his online work. How’s that coming along? Will it be hosted in the same place or somewhere else?

So, when it was discovered he died the first think I thought of, as did many, “What will happen to PHB and Mactonnies.com?” No one had any answers, so I just grabbed everything. The story is, Mac had a recurring charge on his credit card, but no one really knew what it was attached to. His parents picked up the charge, and I don’t think they’ll let it lapse, but maybe if they know his work is safe, we can save them some money.

As far as hosting it goes, Doctor Menlo offered up some space. But just last week, I bought some hosting and I’m going to host my own site there. But they’ve given me 150 gigs. So I can host it at my space.

Hosting is dirt cheap these days.

What I discussed with his parents was to leave it all on line, and let people take from it what they want or need in a fair use basis. I don’t think Mac would have wanted to lock down his writing. And I’m not really worried about plagerism. His works and ideas are very selective.

There’s been an amazing community of people spring up around Mac since his death. I was just talking to Blazingbetta about the tribute site she started. What do you think it is about Mac and his work that was affected people so much?

Mac was (I don’t like saying “was”) earnest in his desire to stay neutral, and had a curiosity which was infective. He also didn’t take himself too seriously, and had a very dry sense of humor about himself.

Mac was also very vulnerable. And in me, I felt protective and extreme sympathy towards what I saw as his difficulty in living in Kansas City. Because he was way to smart, and way to weird for that town.

As you can see, Mac had a wide range of interests. So he had an ability to draw people in. And through Macs passing I’ve met several people with whom I’m very sympatico.

Above: a fake tombstone Mac generated in 2004

Brain Naturally Follows Scientific Method

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:29:40 +0000

It turns out that there is a striking similarity between how the human brain determines what is going on in the outside world and the job of scientists. Good science involves formulating a hypothesis and testing whether this hypothesis is compatible with the scientist’s observations. Researchers in the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt together with the University of Glasgow have shown that this is what the brain does as well. A study shows that it takes less effort for the brain to register predictable as compared to unpredictable images.

Alink and colleagues based this conclusion on the characteristics of responses in the primary visual cortex. It is known that the primary visual cortex is critical for vision and that responses in this brain area create a map of what we are currently looking at. Alink and colleagues, however, for the first time show that images induce smaller responses in this area when they are predictable. The implication of this finding is that the brain does not just sit and wait for visual signals to arrive. Instead, it actively tries to predict these signals and when it is right it is rewarded by being able to respond more efficiently. If it is wrong, massive responses are required to find out why it is wrong and to come up with better predictions.

Psychopaths’ Brains Wired to Seek Rewards, No Matter the Consequences

Klint Finley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:22:58 +0000

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.

“This study underscores the importance of neurological research as it relates to behavior,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. “The findings may help us find new ways to intervene before a personality trait becomes antisocial behavior.”

The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.

Science Daily: Psychopaths’ Brains Wired to Seek Rewards, No Matter the Consequences

Guest Post: Some of the most deranged characters of the Golden Age of comics

billwhitcomb — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:35:26 +0000

This is a guest post by Bill Whitcomb

Dr. Mortal

Dr. Mortal was an elderly, but brilliant mad scientist who lived outside the city with Marlene, his attractive young niece. Marlene discovers her uncle is creating monsters such as his Super Automaton, Man-Ape, and the Infra-Red Monster.

Again with the Comics: Dr. Mortal.

711

One thing’s for sure — no other had the same occupation as this one. He roamed the underworld by night, in search of villains to bring in, like a good superhero should. But in the daytime, he hung around the jail where he was a convicted inmate.

Toonopedia: 711

International Catalog of Superheros: 711

(Click to see full size)

Madame Fatal

Madame Fatal is notable for being a male superhero who dressed up as an elderly woman and as such is the first cross-dressing comics hero. The original incarnation of the more famous cross-dressing character, Red Tornado, later that year, would become the first cross-dressing heroine.

Wikipedia: Madame Fatal

Again with the Comics: Madame Fatal

Different parts process deliberately recalled and spontaneously triggered memories

Klint Finley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:09:38 +0000

The studies in Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation show that these two different ways of remembering things are initiated by entirely different signal paths in the brain. Efforts to retrieve a specific memory are dealt with by the upper part of the frontal lobe. This area of the brain is activated not only in connection with memory-related efforts but also in all types of mental efforts and intentions, according to the dissertation. This part of the brain is not involved in the beginning of the process of unintentionally remembering something as a response to external stimuli. Instead, such memories are activated by specific signals from other parts of the brain, namely those that deal with perceived stimuli like smells, pictures, and words. Sometimes such memories are thought to be more vivid and emotional; otherwise they would not be activated in this way. But Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation shows that this is not the case — memories do not need to be emotionally charged to be revived spontaneously, unintentionally. Nor do memories that are revived spontaneously activate the brain more than other memories.

Science Daily: Different Signal Paths for Spontaneous and Deliberate Activation of Memories

(Photo credit: Kevin Dooley / CC)

Harry Clarke’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe

Klint Finley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:01:16 +0000

A Journey Around My Skull scanned Harry Clarke’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Stunning stuff.

A Journey Around My Skull: Harry Clare, illustrations for E.A. Poe

(via Coilhouse)

The First Decade of Computer Art (1965-1975)

Klint Finley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:13:17 +0000

The First Decade of Computer Art (1965-1975) (PDF)

(via Social Physicist)

What would it cost to make you STOP making art?

Klint Finley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:09:39 +0000

The Dropout Economy

Klint Finley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:31:20 +0000

Resilient communities hit Time:

Imagine a future in which millions of families live off the grid, powering their homes and vehicles with dirt-cheap portable fuel cells. As industrial agriculture sputters under the strain of the spiraling costs of water, gasoline and fertilizer, networks of farmers using sophisticated techniques that combine cutting-edge green technologies with ancient Mayan know-how build an alternative food-distribution system. Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias. [...]

Work and life will be remixed, as old-style jobs, with long commutes and long hours spent staring at blinking computer screens, vanish thanks to ever increasing productivity levels. New jobs that we can scarcely imagine will take their place, only they’ll tend to be home-based, thus restoring life to bedroom suburbs that today are ghost towns from 9 to 5. Private homes will increasingly give way to cohousing communities, in which singles and nuclear families will build makeshift kinship networks in shared kitchens and common areas and on neighborhood-watch duty. Gated communities will grow larger and more elaborate, effectively seceding from their municipalities and pursuing their own visions of the good life. Whether this future sounds like a nightmare or a dream come true, it’s coming.

Time: The Dropout Economy

(via Global Guerrillas)

Neanderthals Not Dumb, but Made Dull Gadgets

Klint Finley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:46:16 +0000

After analyzing tools used by Neanderthals, British and American archaeologists say they were just as well-crafted as those used by our ancestors.

Flakes — wide-bodied stones used for cutting by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens — are just as useful, if not moreso, than narrow stone blades later favored by modern humans, who charged out of Africa 50,000 years ago and soon replaced their larger, hairier European forerunners.

“It’s not a better technology, it’s just a different technology,” said Metin Eren, a University of Exeter experimental archaeology student. [...]

The superiority of blades has long been seen as evidence of human superiority. But according to Eren’s team, blades had only one advantage: they can be easily attached to shafts.

Wired Science: Neanderthals Not Dumb, but Made Dull Gadgets

Alex and Allyson Grey healing after car accident

Klint Finley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:39:20 +0000

Alex and Allyson Grey are recovering after a serious car accident:

Nothing like a brush with death to help you appreciate life. On March 7th, around 1 pm, our lives changed dramatically. A beautiful clear day, we were returning to New York after celebrating Allyson’s father’s birthday in New Hampshire. Driving down freeway I-91 in Vermont, going around 65 mph, a very large dark gray SUV was alongside us on the left. Suddenly the SUV pulled into us, forcing us off the road onto the very rough shoulder of the road, our tire blew out, and we started swerving wildly back across the highway, into a shallow ravine, going so fast we drove directly up two trees and stopping abruptly against a granite outcropping, our car facing heavenward. “Oh God, Oh God!” we cried. “My back!” we echoed. “The cars on fire we’ve got to get out!” The doors were up too high off the ground to get out so we had to unbuckle and fall back into the back seat and jump from there to the ground. We hobbled to the side of the road. By this time some cars were stopping to help, but not the SUV. Some very kind strangers were consoling us and calling 911. State troopers and emergency vehicles arrived . Our car was totaled.

CoSM Blog: Grateful to be Alive!

(via Cole Tucker)

Your Computer Really Is a Part of You

Klint Finley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:30:16 +0000

The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.

“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”

Chemero’s experiment, published March 9 in Public Library of Science, was designed to test one of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts: that people don’t notice familiar, functional tools, but instead “see through” them to a task at hand, for precisely the same reasons that one doesn’t think of one’s fingers while tying shoelaces. The tools are us.

This idea, called “ready-to-hand,” has influenced artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, but without being directly tested.

Wired Science: Your Computer Really Is a Part of You

(via Cole Tucker)

Interview with me about Psychetect at the G-Spot

Klint Finley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:04:50 +0000

(Above: Me playing at the Psychetect album release party)

Psychetect interview on the G-Spot

A couple notes:

1. I announce during the interview the upcoming City of Dead Toys EP, a collaboration between Skerror and me.

2. I’ll be opening for The Steven Losambras at The Parlour in PDX on April 30th.